CIA - Power Gone Mad

[Guest guest]

S

Mon, 5 Dec 2005 22:20:55 EST

CIA - Power Gone Mad

 

 

 

 

Two stories from http://www.truthout.org today that talk about the

CIA and their unlimited and unleashed power to do pretty much anything

they want to do. It seems that many knew, but were reluctant to

confront the all mighty powerful US of freaking A.

 

I believe there are now two Scandinavian countries that have now said

US planes cannot land in their countries. I am assuming that means

private planes or King Air, Gulfstream or 737's that are being used to

transport people to torture-type prisons.

 

First here is a link to an article that talks about torture jets being

sold to attempt cover up.

http://www.melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2004/12/84411_comment.php

 

S

 

 

 

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CIA's Secret Jails Open Up New Transatlantic Rift

By Luke Harding

The Guardian UK

 

Monday 05 December 2005

 

Hundreds of flights landed in Germany over 2 years. Seizure of

innocent people likely to embarrass Rice.

 

The US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice's meeting with

Germany's new chancellor Angela Merkel tomorrow is likely to be a

tricky affair. What should have been a chance to repair the damaging

rift between the countries over Iraq is fast being eclipsed by

something else - a new transatlantic row between the US and the

European Union over the CIA.

 

During the weekend there were further revelations about the role

of the CIA in kidnapping suspects. According to yesterday's Washington

Post, the agency carried out a number of " erroneous renditions " -

grabbing suspects off the street who later turned out to be innocent.

 

In total, " about three dozen " people may have been wrongly seized,

the paper said. One of them was Khaled Masri - a German national who

shared the same name as a top al-Qaida terrorist.

 

The CIA kidnapped him in Macedonia on Dec 31 2003, and flew him to

Afghanistan, where he spent five months in appalling conditions. After

realising its mistake, the administration debated whether to inform

" the Germans " of the blunder, eventually dispatching the US ambassador

to Germany, Daniel Coats, to tell the government, the paper said.

 

" They picked up the wrong people, who had no information. In many

cases there was only some vague association with terrorism, " one CIA

officer told the Post. The embarrassing details are likely to increase

pressure on Ms Rice to give a forthright account of the CIA's

behaviour during her visit to Europe this week. (CondoLIESa Bush --

forthright...surely they are kidding)

 

Yesterday the magazine Der Spiegel also gave further details that

suggest that Europe was used as a major transit hub. It revealed that

after September 11 2001, the CIA flew to Germany 437 times. Two CIA

aircraft landed 132 and 146 times in 2002 and 2003 respectively, the

magazine said, citing German government figures.

 

Ms Rice is not the only person with difficult questions to answer,

however. European governments - who have so far been reluctant to

confront Washington over the flights - now face awkward inquiries

about how much they knew.

 

" If [EU] member or candidate states actively contributed to, or

connived in, illegal transports and torture, or illegal prisons on

their territory, that must be investigated and the necessary

consequences drawn, " Martin Schulz, head of the Socialist Group in the

European Parliament, said yesterday. He added: 'There's active

acceptance, and there's acquiescence. Neither of those are acceptable.'

 

According to the Post, the CIA operated a network of secret

prisons or " black sites " in eight countries at various times,

including several in eastern Europe. Since 9/11, the agency, often

working with foreign partners, had captured an estimated 3,000 people,

including several key al-Qaida leaders. Members of the rendition group

would blindfold suspects, cut off their clothes, and administer an

enema and sleeping drugs. They would transfer prisoners to one of the

CIA's covert sites or to a detention facility in a friendly country -

in Afghanistan, Central Asia or the Middle East. Things did not always

go to plan, however. Mr Masri was kidnapped while the CIA's station

chief in Macedonia was away on holiday. The American Civil Liberties

Union is expected to announce tomorrow that it is suing the CIA in

connection with his case. Others detained included an innocent college

professor who had given an al-Qaida suspect a bad grade. " It was the

Camelot of counter-terrorism. We didn't have to mess with others, and

it was fun, " an official working in the CIA's counter-terrorism centre

told the Post.

 

Ms Merkel, who meets Condoleeza Rice in Berlin tomorrow, has said

she wants a fresh start with the Bush administration, describing the

row over Iraq as a " past battle " . Ms Merkel's government played down

expectations of revelations from the US. " We're not rushing things, " a

spokesman said. But the issue seems unlikely to go away. " If the US

doesn't create any clarity ... then they feed suspicion and encourage

speculation, " said Mr Schulz. " If Ms Rice gives no clarification, we

in parliament will further insist that the governments of the EU

provide this clarification themselves. "

 

Backstory

 

The American policy of moving suspects from one country to another

without any court hearing or extradition process is thought to have

begun in the Reagan era. In those days, joint CIA and FBI teams would

bring drug traffickers and terrorism suspects to the United States.

They would be read their rights, given lawyers and then put on trial.

In the wake of the 1993 bomb attack on the World Trade Centre, these

detentions, known as " renditions " , were largely replaced by the

" extraordinary rendition " policy of taking suspects to a third

country. CIA officers combating Islamist terrorism decided they should

keep some suspects out of the US courts for fear of jeopardising their

sources and to protect intelligence officials from other countries who

did not wish to be called as witnesses. Michael Scheuer, a former CIA

counter-terrorism expert, has explained how he approached Clinton

administration officials for permission. " They said, 'Do it'. " While

it is against US law to take anyone to a country where there are

" substantial grounds " for believing they will be tortured, those

officials are said to have relied upon a very precise reading of that

term, arguing that they could not be sure whether suspects would be

tortured or not. At least four suspected Islamists were subsequently

abducted in the Balkans in the late 1990s and taken to Egypt. One

disappeared, two are reported to have been executed and one later

alleged that he was tortured. An Islamist organisation threatened

retaliation for these abductions and two days later, the US embassies

in Tanzania and Kenya were blown up, killing 224 people. The Bush

administration reviewed and renewed the presidential directive which

authorises the rendition programme, and after the terrorist attacks of

9/11, the number of abductions rocketed. According to Scott Horton, an

international law specialist who helped prepare a report on renditions

published by the New York University School of Law and the New York

City Bar Association, as many as 150 people have been " rendered " over

the past four years. Most of these people have not been charged with

any crime.

 

They are denied lawyers, their families do not know their

whereabouts and their detention is concealed from the international

committee of the Red Cross.

 

 

 

 

 

UK 'Breaking Law' over CIA Secret Flights

By Ian Cobain and Luke Harding

The Guardian UK

 

Monday 05 December 2005

 

Condoleezza Rice flies into row over " rendition " of terror suspects.

 

The British government is guilty of breaking international law if

it allowed secret CIA " rendition " flights of terror suspects to land

at UK airports, according to a report by American legal scholars.

 

Merely giving permission for the flights to refuel while en route

to the Middle East to collect a prisoner would constitute a breach of

the law, according to the opinion commissioned by an all-party group

of MPs, which meets in parliament for the first time today.

 

The report comes as the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice,

arrives in Europe for a trip that has been overshadowed by the growing

dispute about the CIA's use of rendition - the term used to describe

the abduction of suspects who are taken to countries where they can be

questioned outside the protection of US law.

 

Several European governments, as well as the EU, have launched

investigations into hundreds of CIA flights which have shuttled

through the continent. Fresh revelations in Germany at the weekend

show that CIA aircraft have landed in the country on 437 occasions.

The Washington Post also reported that dozens of prisoners had been

wrongly taken under rendition, with some kidnapped in their home

countries and held incommunicado for weeks.

 

Ms Rice has promised to clarify the issue. Yesterday, however, US

officials made it clear she was likely to respond robustly to any

questioning from European leaders.

 

" We do not move people around the world so they can be tortured, "

Stephen Hadley, the White House's adviser, said yesterday, pledging

that the Bush administration would deal with the issue " in a

comprehensive way " . In briefings officials said she would remind

European ministers that their governments had cooperated in

anti-terror operations with the US.

 

The all-party parliamentary group on extraordinary rendition, with

representatives from the three main parties, was formed after the

Guardian reported in September that aircraft operated by the CIA had

flown in and out of civilian airports and RAF bases in the UK at least

210 times since September 11 2001.

 

Last night the Foreign Office said: " We have no evidence to

corroborate media allegations about use of UK territory in rendition

operations. "

 

A report for the group by New York University's school of law's

centre for human rights and global justice, concluded: " A state which

aids or assists another state in the commission of an internationally

wrongful act by the latter is internationally responsible for doing so. "

 

The authors believe the government could face legal sanctions

because of the UK's support. " Accomplice liability has been recognised

in international criminal law since at least the Nuremberg trials, "

they said. Ms Rice, who meets Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel,

tomorrow, also faces tough questions about reports of secret CIA

prisons in eastern Europe.

 

Yesterday Romania's foreign minister, Razvan Ungureanu, again

denied that his country had hosted a covert CIA jail - but left open

the possibility that the US had operated one without his government's

knowledge. He urged Human Rights Watch to hand over evidence it had of

secret CIA prisons in Romania.

 

Andrew Tyrie, the Tory MP and chairman of the parliamentary group,

said: " By apparently assisting the US in the practice of extraordinary

rendition, the UK and the west are losing the moral high ground so

valuable to foreign policy since the end of the cold war. "